The JACK Quartet performed Friday as part of the Fontana Chamber Arts season.Henrik Olund

KALAMAZOO, MI — Fontana Chamber Arts reached backward and forward in musical eras Friday for a concert called “Ars Nova.” To achieve that aim, Fontana brought the young virtuoso JACK Quartet to Kalamazoo’s Wellspring Theater. (JACK Quartet emanates from the initials of the players’ first names: violinists Ari Streisfeld and Christopher Otto, violist John Pickford Richards and cellist Kevin McFarland.)

The brilliant, versatile quartet performed its own adaptations of certain medieval music, along with major works by two contemporary composers whose daring idioms have left indelible marks on today’s classical universe.

Ars Nova was a concept from the Middle Ages that recognized avant-garde elements in music of the day. The JACK ensemble discerned such freshness in pieces by Guillaume de Machaut (born c. 1300) and Guillaume Dufay (born c. 1398). As it happens, the short pieces JACK players performed by these early composers had interest but only tangentially.

Friday’s concert was more focused on ingenious music by famed American composer Philip Glass (born 1937) and Greek music-aesthetician extraordinaire Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001). These contemporary composers offered starkly different yet convincing musical perspectives through their trailblazing styles.

Glass, perhaps better known thanks to his popular operas and film soundtracks, was an early exponent of minimalism — the highly reductive technique, featuring short motif-segments repeated profusely. He masterfully applied that style in his String Quartet No. 5 (1991). The JACK players specialize in contemporary music, and that close knowledge paid off in a particularly exciting performance.

Glass’ Fifth Quartet, in five movements, revealed an ideal balance between traditions of chamber music and Glass’ unique musical voice. The opening section featured an accessible romantic yearning suffused with genuinely romantic harmonies. From the second movement on, the cello often performed a drone sound, using a rocking motion on the strings.

Glass here relied on arpeggiate notes to create barcarolle melodies and a churning template to animate the work. The opening melodic motifs returned at the close to provide a calm resolution.

The sound was more dense in Xanakis’ “Tetras” (1983). If Glass’ work was neat and tidy, Xanakis’ was the antithesis where raw energy dominated. Thousands of notes erupted from the instruments, evoking myriad sounds—not necessarily musical tones. Xenakis replicated primal sounds, from squeaky doors to swarming insects to wailing sirens. Spikey pizzicatos melted into slippery glissandos.

Xenakis’s work offers an inventory of sonic integers that subsequent composers can subsume into their writing.

Meanwhile, we recognize the awesome task of the JACK Quartet in making musical sense from seemingly random sound.